Nanny Placement Agency in British Columbia: How It Works Province-Wide

Puffin has two coverage maps, and they are not the same shape.

Hourly care — childcare, postpartum, senior support, event nannies — runs in 16 licensed municipalities across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. A caregiver drives to your home, so the map is drawn by how far that is reasonable.

Nanny placement has no such limit. It is a search, not a shift. We source from a candidate registry that covers British Columbia, and we place for families anywhere in the province. Same fee wherever you are. No travel surcharge, no zone pricing, no minimum-distance rule.

This page is the whole mechanism: what it costs, what happens in what order, who employs the nanny at the end, and how to check every claim on this page for yourself.

What "province-wide" actually means

It means three specific things, and it is worth being precise because "we serve all of BC" is easy to say.

The fee does not move. $500 for a placement under three months, $1,000 for three months or longer, wherever you live. There is no version of this where a family is quoted more because they are further away.

The search is local to you, not to us. The point of a registry that covers the province is that we look for someone who already lives near you. A placement built on a ninety-minute commute has a short life — the person is not tired in month one, they are tired in month five, and then you are searching again. We would rather take longer and place someone who stays.

What does vary is how long it takes. Candidate pools are denser in Metro Vancouver than in a small community, and we will tell you that at the start rather than at the end. Our published range is 7–10 business days for matched candidates; in a smaller market it can run longer, and the honest thing is to say so before you pay rather than after.

The fee, stated in full, before you give us anything

Short-term placement — under three months: $500. Summer coverage, a parental-leave gap, a contract, a trial.

Long-term placement — three months or longer: $1,000. Adds an extended candidate pool, a skills assessment for each candidate, and personality matching for family fit.

It is collected in two parts. $200 to start the search, and the balance when your nanny is placed. The deposit counts toward the fee rather than sitting on top of it — a short-term placement is $200 and then $300.

It is a flat fee. Not a percentage of the nanny's salary, not a recurring commission, not a membership. And the fee never includes the nanny's wages, which are agreed directly between your family and your nanny. The full cost picture — fee, salary band, employer-side costs — is in what a nanny placement actually costs.

If we cannot present suitable candidates within 30 days of your paid inquiry, the $200 comes back in full. That test is about our effort, not your decision: it is something we either did or did not do. Once candidates have been presented, the deposit is not refundable, because the search it paid for has been carried out. You are never invoiced the balance unless a placement is actually made.

What happens, in order

1. You submit a family profile and pay the $200 deposit by card. On the site, in the form, with the amount on screen before you enter anything. Not a quote request, not a callback.

2. We review it within one business day and begin sourcing across the BC registry.

3. We screen. CRRP vulnerable-sector criminal record checks, reference verification, and interviews — all of it before anyone reaches you.

4. You are presented with two to three matched candidates, typically within 7–10 business days, with introductions coordinated.

5. You choose. The balance is invoiced by secure Square invoice at that point, not before.

6. One complimentary re-match within 30 days if the person you chose does not work out.

Who employs the nanny — the part worth getting right

This is the question most likely to be answered vaguely elsewhere, so here is the unvague version.

Once a nanny is placed, they become your family's employee. You set the salary, run payroll, remit CPP and EI, and carry the employment obligations, including the WorkSafeBC question. Puffin found and screened the person; Puffin is not their employer.

That is genuinely different from Puffin's hourly care, where the caregiver is our employee and we carry payroll, remittances, WorkSafeBC premiums and liability insurance — and the family is never the employer of record. Two services, two arrangements, and conflating them would be a real misstatement about who is liable if something goes wrong.

We say it here, up front, because it changes your budget and your paperwork. There is more in employed nanny vs. contractor nanny — who is actually liable and nanny taxes and payroll in BC.

If you would rather not run payroll yourself, there is an optional payroll and hours-tracking add-on at $99/month, cancellable for the following month at any time. Read what it does carefully: it assists with the work. It does not transfer the obligation. You remain the employer of record either way.

And if you would rather not be an employer at all, that is a real option — hourly childcare starts at $32/hr with a three-hour minimum, and those caregivers are ours.

How to check any of this yourself

None of the above should be taken on trust, including from us. All of it is verifiable from the outside:

The prices are published. Every rate Puffin charges is on the rate card, and the placement fee is on the placement page. You do not have to ask what it costs.

The terms are published. The refund test, the re-match, the payroll add-on billing and the employer obligations are all in the Terms, in writing, before you pay anything.

The payment system is on the site and you can see it work. The deposit is charged by card in the form with the amount shown first. Nothing is arranged in cash, nothing is settled at the door, and every charge produces an emailed record — which is the whole of why Puffin doesn't take cash.

The screening process is written down. What a CRRP vulnerable-sector check is, what it does and does not catch, and what we do in addition to it is set out in how Puffin vets every caregiver and what CRRP clearance is. Ask us about any part of it directly and we will answer.

If an agency cannot show you those four things before taking your money, that is worth noticing — not because of who they are, but because there is no reason a real one cannot.

When placement is the wrong tool

Placement is for a dedicated person embedded in your family's week. If you need care some evenings, a few afternoons, or once, there is no search to run and no employment relationship to create — book hourly childcare instead, from $32/hr, with all children in the home included at no extra charge.

The rough dividing line is whether you need someone *every* week. Below that, hourly. Above it, placement starts paying for itself.